Give me an ice cream cone and a leather jacket

We woke up the next morning at the Sivir Hotel, none too eager to leave Krasnoyarsk, and headed back to the good old Travelers Coffee for a last bit of internet before striking out to pick up provisions for our next train ride. We were feeling fine, as we walked along eating ice creams on the sunny streets of Krasnoyarsk, and looking even better in our new leather jackets.

It took us a surprising amount of time to find a large grocery store, but when we did, we were able to load up on all our favorite supplies: a couple loaves of black bread, 3 dollar jars of caviar, nutty Siberian cheese, thinly sliced sausages, thick aged pork fat, bags of bacon and scallion flavored chips, and a few cans of Kvas.

I was so excited about our purchases, I accidentally stole the key to the locker that they asked you to place your backpack in while shopping. I laid it on the pavement outside the Hotel Sibir, hoping some good samaritan might return it for me, for we were getting very close to missing our train to Irkutsk.

We did not miss the train, though, and after stowing our cycles, relaxed into our seats to let more of the beautiful Siberian countryside just slide right on by.

We shared our bunk cluster in patzcart with a couple of fantastic people. One of them was a 30-50 year old man who spend the entire train ride slowly drinking giant 2 liter bottles of warm beer, and reading thick Russian history books. The other was a perhaps 50 year old woman from Chita, who had been on the train for three days already and was more than happy to share her vast supply of tomatoes and huge canister of mayonnaise to dowse them with.

After about 5 hours, the train stopped at a particularly busy station and we climbed off to see what was for sale.

The answer was everything.

We wandered around investigating all the options for a while, and ended up buying a bag of salty home made pickles, a few hard boiled eggs, some meat cutlets, and a fried river fish.

We were tempted by this gold mine brand beer, but decided it was probably terrible.

Back in the cabin, we layed into snacking. I found the pickles to be especially out of this world. Scott was a huge fan of the 3 dollar caviar. Oh, heck, I was too. Eating on Russian trains is great.

Soon night fell and we were whipping along through the darkness, blasting through tiny clusters of township and then vast swaths of pitch black forest.